Citizens of nowhere

Despite some caveats, Dina Nayeri's The Ungrateful Refugee that lets us into the lives of one of the most misunderstood people in the world

This is an angry book written by an erstwhile Iranian refugee now happily settled in America but still seething with rage over the way refugees are perceived and treated. She quotes an American woman saying: “Well, I sure do get it. You came for a better life.” 

Dina Nayeri writes that “her words lo­dged in my ear like grit”. “A better life?” Living in a decrepit Oklahoma apartment block for the destitute compared to which “life in Iran was a fairytale”? To her, the American woman’s remark typified the Western perception of refugees as opportunists.

She weaves memories of her own experience